Techmeme
August 21, 2026, 12:30 PM

Top News

Diana Olick / CNBC:
CBRE: NYC becomes the top tech talent market for the first time with 394,300 jobs, beating the Bay Area's 375,730, amid SF job cuts and NYC finance sector hires  —  It should come as no surprise that the number of artificial intelligence-specific tech workers is growing rapidly …
Bloomberg:
DeepSeek unveils an experimental multimodal version of its V4 Flash model, saying it nears the performance of Anthropic's Opus 4.8 on multimodal agentic tests  —  DeepSeek unveiled an experimental AI model that can understand visual prompts, saying the tool nears the performance of an advanced model by US rival Anthropic PBC.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Walmart, which has long resisted contactless Tap to Pay payments, says it will soon start rolling out the tech, which supports Apple Pay, Google Pay, and more  —  Apparently, hell has frozen over.  Walmart on Friday said it will finally accept payments via both Apple Pay and Google Pay at its stores, including Walmart and Sam's Club.
Kirsten Korosec / TechCrunch:
Nevada approves permits letting Tesla deploy up to 5,000 robotaxis in the Las Vegas area over the next year, while Waymo and Uber are each allowed up to 1,000  —  Nevada, get ready for the robotaxis.  —  The Nevada Transportation Authority unanimously approved three permits Thursday that will allow Tesla …
CNBC:
How the memory boom is reshaping Micron's hometown of Boise, Idaho: new millionaires, job growth, traffic, soaring housing costs, and uneven wealth distribution  —  Dave Petso has been a wealth manager in Boise, Idaho since the 1980s.  His business has survived multiple recessions …
Jenny Lee / CNBC:
Samsung unveils a $65.1B-$79.5B shareholder return package for 2026, combining dividends and share buybacks, calling it “the largest ever by a Korean company”  —  Samsung Electronics has announced a shareholder return package, marking a blockbuster week for shareholder returns …
Tim Fernholz / TechCrunch:
Space data center startup Starcloud raised a $250M extension, at a $2.3B valuation, to its March $170M Series A; source: Nvidia invested $25M  —  Starcloud, a startup developing satellites that can perform AI inference in orbit, told TechCrunch that it has added a $250 million extension to its March $170 million Series A funding round.
Zac Hall / 9to5Mac:
OpenAI debuts an Apple Messages plugin for ChatGPT on macOS, letting ChatGPT Work and Codex read, search, and analyze chats, draft and send messages, and more  —  Well, this seems interesting.  ChatGPT's latest update adds a new Mac integration: the ability to work with conversations from Apple's Messages app.
Kristin Robinson / Billboard:
Email: Apple tells music industry partners that songs tagged as “materially generated using AI” by content providers will now be visibly labeled on Apple Music  —  The news builds on Apple's recent announcement of AI Transparency Tags for songs.  Now, the service will soon make those disclosures visible to users.
Dawn Kopecki / Reuters:
How crypto, AI, and online betting companies emerged as the biggest industries shaping the 2026 US midterm races, as corporate spending reaches a record $517M  —  A handful of billionaires and companies are driving corporate spending in U.S. midterm elections this year …

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Earlier Picks

Bloomberg:
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Newcomer:
Georg Szalai / The Hollywood Reporter:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Bloomberg:
Rachel Metz / Bloomberg: